Shaun Attwood - American Made: Who Killed Barry Seal? Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush

American Made
Who Killed Barry Seal?
Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush

War on Drugs Book 2

Shaun Attwood

First published in Great Britain by Gadfly Press (Shaun Attwood) in 2016

Copyright Shaun Attwood 2016

The right of Shaun Attwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be edited, amended, lent, resold, hired out, distributed or otherwise circulated without the publishers written permission

Permission can be obtained from attwood.shaun@hotmail.co.uk

This book is a work of non-fiction based on research by the author

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-9930215-3-4

Typeset and cover design by Jane Dixon-Smith

Cover art by Jeremy Arviso

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Acknowledgements

A big thank you to Barbara Attwood, Derick Attwood, Penny Kimber, Emma Bagnell, Jane Dixon-Smith

My Books

English Shaun Trilogy

Party Time
Hard Time
Prison Time

War on Drugs Trilogy

Pablo Escobar: Beyond Narcos
American Made: Who Killed Barry Seal? Pablo Escobar or George HW Bush
We Are Being Lied To: The War on Drugs (Expected 2017)

Life Lessons

Making a Murderer: The Framing of Avery and Dassey by Kratz and Other Parasites (Expected 2017)

Two Tonys (Expected 2017)

T-Bone (Expected 2020)

Contents

Part 1
The Victim Barry Seal

Chapter 1

Official Story of Barrys Death

While Barry Seal packed his briefcase at his home in Baton Rouge, three Colombian hitmen in a hotel room prepared to kill him.

Debbie, Im leaving, Barry said, stood in the living room under a grand chandelier, gazing upstairs for his wife.

With brown permed hair, Debbie appeared in a white floral top and blue pants. OK. Ill meet you for breakfast if you want, she said, resting a hand on the banister, the other holding a hair brush.

Right after my jog?

You started jogging!

Barry smiled. Every morning around my new home, he said, referring to the Salvation Army halfway house a judge had ordered him to stay at from 6 pm every night. If I cant be rich, I might as well still be pretty, Barry said in a slow and pleasant Louisiana accent.

Resting her elbows on the banister, Debbie beamed. Well, youre pretty to me, rich or poor.

Whoo-whee! Barry yelped, shimmying his hips and shoulders. Im way past poor, baby doll! As he checked his watch, his smile evaporated. Oh, Ive got to go. Its quarter to six.

I love you, Debbie said.

I love you, too, Mrs Seal.

As her hefty husband with chunky sideburns walked out, Debbie yelled, Be careful!

In a hotel room, the Colombians disguised a machine gun by wrapping clothes around it. Walking briskly in light-coloured suits and clothes, they went downstairs and got in a car. The sun had almost disappeared from the skyline as they drove towards the Salvation Army halfway house.

Cruising along the streets of Baton Rouge in a white Cadillac, Barry was looking forward to the end of his six-month sentence at the halfway house. Hed been told that the Medelln Cartel run by powerful Colombian drug lords, including Pablo Escobar had put a $500,000 bounty on his head after his status as an informant had been leaked to the press by the Reagan-Bush administration.

It was dark when Barry arrived at the halfway house. He reversed his car towards a two-storey beige building. He was about to get out when a shadowy figure took him by surprise. Barry squinted at the man next to his Cadillac: a thin Colombian with a moustache and a hostile gaze. The man jumped forward and aimed a gun at Barry.

News Anchor Peter Jennings reported, He used to smuggle drugs and he got caught and he became one of the governments most valuable informants in the war against cocaine. But last night in Louisiana, Barry Seals enemies caught up with him and killed him. Tonight, three men are in custody. NBCs Brian Ross reports that Seal was about to testify for the government once again.

Authorities believe that last nights machine-gun killing, Brian Ross said, of top drug informant Barry Seal was ordered by drug bosses in Medelln, Colombia, who sent five men to Baton Rouge to kill Seal. Seals son Barry Jr, one of five children, was restrained by police, who said the gunmen had waited in ambush for Seal at a Salvation Army shelter, where Seal had been sentenced by a federal judge on a drug charge to do community service. Seal was a tough-guy TWA pilot, who got caught smuggling cocaine and became one of the most important and daring undercover operatives, infiltrating the top Colombian drug operations. In a recent interview, Seal said he knew he was risking his life.

A clip of Barrys face was shown in a cockpit wearing sunglasses. The old saying: Barry said, If you cant stand the heat, dont work in the kitchen. I can take the pressure.

It was Seal who posed as a smuggler, Brian Ross said, and flew into Nicaragua and took these pictures showing Colombian drug dealers and Sandinista officials loading cocaine on his plane.

The Reagan-Bush administration had claimed that Pablo Escobar was on one of the grainy pictures.

Seal busted up the Colombian connection in the Caribbean country of Turks and Caicos, setting up a payoff meeting on videotape that led to the arrest and conviction of the countrys prime minister. And Seal was scheduled to be the key witness against this man, Jorge Ochoa, the top Colombian drug boss now in jail in Spain, about to be extradited to the United States. Authorities say the Ochoa drug organisation was responsible for the bombing of the US embassy in Bogot last year, the assassination of Colombias attorney general and now the murder in Louisiana of the man who was perhaps the most important undercover drug informant ever.

The rest of the media followed suit by reporting that Barry had been a government witness against drug traffickers, including Jorge Ochoa and Pablo Escobar of the Medelln Cartel, who had sanctioned the hit. Having refused to go into the Federal Witness Protection Program, Barry had been ambushed outside a Louisiana halfway house and died in a hail of bullets. The media later reported that a three-man Colombian hit team had been caught, convicted and sentenced to life without parole. Case closed.

As I researched Barrys life for my War On Drugs trilogy, the official story fell apart. Barry was deeply involved with powerful people who specialised in assassinations and trafficked drugs and weapons on an international scale. The information that hed amassed working for them as a pilot had rendered him a liability. He died with George HW Bushs telephone number in his possession. To understand why Barry was killed, its necessary to examine his life beyond its portrayal in Hollywood and the relationships he forged while working for the CIA.

Chapter 2